The Orion Protocol Read Online Free PDF

achieved.
    “Well, hell, Bullwinkle.”
    Adjusting the posture of the Beanie Bullwinkle doll propped atop her computer, she separated out two things immediately: a baby shower announcement that made her wonder if she was wasting her life for about 2.5 seconds until she opened the second letter, an invitation to a party at the former vice-presidential mansion to celebrate International Space Station Alpha.
    “Whoa! Big bash at the Blair House . . . ”
    The minor perk of minicelebrity made her feel instantly better.
    Working her way through the stacks, she came to a manila envelope with “ATT: Ms. Angela Browning” neatly typed on a white address label but no return address. The otherwise plain envelope had already been opened and inspected in the mail room.
    Angela consulted her moose.
    “Fan mail from some flounder?”
    Inside she found one item: a CD-ROM in a clear plastic jewel case.
    “Curiouser and curiouser . . .”
    Held to the light, the unlabeled disk offered up nothing more than semipsychedelic rainbows refracting off its laser-etched grooves.
    “ Muy mysterioso .”
    The smell of dark-roast coffee began wafting its way to her work station, promising a second wind, but Angela ignored it. Loading in the CD, she let Norton Utilities scan for virus encounters of the digital kind until a single icon appeared labeled tolas.
    The TOLAS file opened to reveal a high-res satellite image of the Cydonia region on Mars and its most infamous anomaly, the leonine-humanoid “Face.”
    “Oh, God.” Angela rolled her eyes, but her attention was immediately drawn to a cluster of faceted objects near the Face: several four-sided and five-sided geometric shapes rising up out of the frozen Martian plain, monumental artifacts that looked for all the world like Egyptian pyramids.
    “Aha.” She grinned and shook the hair back out of her face, pretty sure where this had come from. “Those Goddard boys and their high-tech toys.”
    Angela keyed the speed dial on her phone.
    “Hell-o, Goddard Flight. Richard Eklund, please. Thanks.”
    While on hold, she searched her e-mail for new messages about this from Goddard Space Flight Labs or from NASA researcher Richard Eklund but found nothing.
    Angela had first met Eklund while prepping a Science Horizon show on NASA’s late-’90’s faster-smarter-cheaper robotic Mars program. Eccentric, brilliant, a confirmed workaholic, Eklund had quickly become her compass in navigating the labyrinth of Space Agency politics as well as an all-around go-to guy on all things Martian.
    “Richard? Angela Browning. Are you guys smoking the drapes over there, or what?” She tried not to giggle, but not hard enough to succeed at it. “I mean the Mars CD.” Angela glanced up at the pyramids on her screen. “The one with Little Egypt on it. Nudge-nudge, wink-wink?”
    On the other end, Eklund sounded puzzled, but Angela wasn’t buying.
    “Come on, CGI Boy. Confession is good for the soul. I’m not saying it doesn’t look good. It’s too good! What? Nope, no note, nothing.”
    She reinspected the envelope to be sure and looked around in vain to see if something had fallen out on the floor.
    “No note, no return address, nada . Just a file labeled tolas with a high-res photo of Cydonia, including some pretty kick-ass pyramids . . . yes, T-O-L-A-S.”
    She heard the NASA scientist laughing as he explained the acronym. Angela didn’t think it was as funny as all that.
    “Oh, Tricks of Light and Shadow. Great . . . so it’s probably some geeksters at MIT or something, firing up a fatty and having too much fun.”
    She glared at the pyramids in the beautifully rendered Marscape, no doubt the beneficiary of state-of-the-art computer graphics. Eklund invited her to bring the disk out to Goddard Labs so they could check it out.
    “Oh, I don’t know.” Angela glanced at her watch. “If I’m done before midnight. Leave me a pass, anyway, okay? Thanks.”

    “Hokey smokes, Bullwinkle.”